There's another nuclear arms race everyone is freaking out about
India fired yet another missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead on Tuesday, ratcheting up tensions over the brewing arms race with neighboring nuclear giant China.
The test of an Agni-I missile follows back-to-back launches in January of the longer-range Agni-IV and even more powerful Agni-V, which is capable of hitting China’s biggest cities on the Pacific coast.
While the Agni-I is an earlier model with a relatively limited range of 700 kilometers — compared with the Agni-V’s much more threatening 5,000 kilometers — the steady drumbeat of Indian missile tests hasn’t gone unnoticed in Beijing.
Following India’s test of the Agni-V on January 18, the Chinese state-owned newspaper, the Global Times, wrote that the launch posed “a direct threat to China's security as well as a big challenge to the global efforts of nuclear non-proliferation.” The paper argued China should respond by building up its military and economic presence in the Indian Ocean.
India has already been eyeing China’s rising profile in the Indian Ocean with unease, recently signing an agreement to build up naval infrastructure on the archipelago of Seychelles, in a move widely seen as aimed at countering Chinese influence.
After the first Agni-IV launch of 2018, on Jan. 2, the newspaper ran an editorial titled “India needs to cool its missile fever.” The paper warned: “China is sincere in developing friendly ties with India. But it will not sit still if India goes too far.”
The recent spate of tests follows a tense 10-week border standoff between India and China last summer, during which a few hundred soldiers from both sides stared each other down over a parcel of land claimed by China as well as by India’s ally, Bhutan. At another heated border standoff in the Himalayas, staring devolved into fisticuffs, during which soldiers were filmed throwing rocks at each other.